Scooters And One Wheels

Lime Prime is the scooter’s new month-to-month subscription service

Lime is launching a new monthly subscription service for its electric scooters called – no kidding – Lime Prime.

Lime usually charges a fixed price to unlock a vehicle and then a fee per minute to drive it. For $ 5.99 per month, the company waives this initial fee for Lime Prime subscribers. And in markets without activation fees, drivers receive a 25 percent discount on the price of their journey. Subscribers continue to pay the per minute fee, but Lime says that someone who used one of their scooters every day would save about $ 25 per month as part of the subscription plan.

This isn’t the first iteration of Lime’s subscription service

There are other benefits associated with a subscription. Lime Prime members can reserve any scooter or bike for free for up to 30 minutes, compared to just 10 minutes for a standard user. And for a limited time, the company is offering the first month of its new plan for free to attract new customers.

Subscriptions are fast becoming a way for scooter and bike sharing companies to attract more customers in order to increase their revenue streams. And this isn’t the first iteration of Lime’s subscription service. In 2019, the company launched the Lime Pass, a weekly plan that also removed the subscription unlock fee. Prices for the Lime Pass varied, but for example, subscribers in San Francisco were charged $ 4.99 per week.

Lime isn’t the first scooter company to look into subscriptions either. Bird has experimented with his own plan for his shared electric scooters with mixed results. The scooter manufacturer Unagi has a plan in several cities in the United States. With Evel in New York City, Dance in Berlin as well as Swapfiets and VanMoof, electric bikes are also jumping on subscription cars.

Subscriptions have been a mixed bag for the auto industry. Ford shut down last fall due to low demand. Cadillac discontinued its Book service in 2018, only to revive it a few months later with fewer options. And BMW recently shut down its own subscription service.

Other automakers have had some success. BMW, Porsche, Audi, Volvo, Nissan and Jaguar still offer a few variations of a subscription service. Even the major car rental companies Hertz and Enterprise are participating in the campaign. Most of these subscriptions are only available in certain cities and are still in the pilot phase.

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